A Japanese court on Friday ordered the Japanese unit of online retail giant Amazon.com Inc. to pay 35 million yen in damages for failing to take measures to stop sellers from offering fake products on its platform.
The focus of the trial at the Tokyo District Court was on the degree of obligation Amazon Japan G.K. has to police listings, and how much effort it must make to identify and remove counterfeit goods.
Medical equipment manufacturer Try and E Co and its distributor Excel Plan Co sought 280 million yen in damages against Amazon Japan, claiming that their sales declined due to the availability of counterfeit items.
Presiding Judge Yuko Shintani said Amazon is obliged to take effective measures against counterfeits, noting that it failed to stop listings of such products despite being made aware of them.
Try and E and distributor Excel Plan, both based in Kobe, filed the lawsuit over pulse oximeters for measuring blood oxygen levels. Only Excel Plan was compensated.
"The ruling was a landmark in terms of acknowledging the obligation to build an appropriate (authentication) system, as businesses practically have no other option but to use platforms such as that of Amazon," a lawyer representing the plaintiffs said.
The pulse oximeters concerned are developed and manufactured by Try and E, and distributed exclusively by Excel Plan.
According to the suit, Excel Plan was selling a pulse oximeter on Amazon in 2021 while another seller listed a counterfeit item on the same page at about 10 percent of the price of the genuine product.
Since the Amazon system promotes goods with the lowest price, the fake product was more visible on the site, it said.
Excel Plan reported the situation and requested Amazon take appropriate action, but the page listing the genuine oximeter was deleted and the company was unable to sell it, according to the suit.
© KYODO
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tora
What? A massive percentage of the products on there are fake and it's been like that for some time. It took them this long to figure that out? Amazon is virtually unusable these days.
TaiwanIsNotChina
What is that, like a minute's worth of revenue for them?
Ah_so
Chicken feed. This is no incentive for Amazon to change anything. They probably make far more in commission from these fakes than they were fined.
WoodyLee
""Excel Plan reported the situation and requested Amazon take appropriate action, but the page listing the genuine oximeter was deleted and the company was unable to sell it, according to the suit.""
Unbelievable, I am not surprised at all , FAKES are the Core of almost all E Commerce sites.
If you want the genuine ones better go to their stores or contact them directly, if you are ordering online there is a 50/50 chance you are buying FAKE.
Some dude
There's almost an Onion headline in there:
Amazon unfamiliar with foreign countries' fixation on "holding to account"
NZ
35mil are peanuts for amazon-to be paid by their clients in a few moments.
OssanAmerica
If you think Amazon is bad with Chinese counterfeit products, you should take a look at Ebay.
TokyoLiving
Good..
Amazon, I love you, be nice..
therougou
Very usable and convenient if you stick to the products/brands you know. Look for anything new and you have to deal with the fake products and fake reviews that go alone with them.
wallace
I use Amazon because I am a bit isolated from mainstream shopping. I check the items very carefully, including prices. Only ripped off twice. Fake USB stick. Got a refund on that. Returned a Chinese-style jacket and was still charged full price. About ¥5,000. I have been using Amazon since 2009.
Reviews are often another fake.
リッチ
Where does the money go? The government? Just sees like the goverment profiting from the fake sales as well.
ian
Where do you think lawsuit awards go?